Recent mountain pine beetle infestations have resulted in
widespread tree mortality and the accumulation of dead woody
fuels across the Rocky Mountain region, creating concerns over
future forest stand conditions and fire behavior. We quantified
how salvage logging influenced tree regeneration and fuel loads
relative to nearby, uncut stands for 24 lodgepole pine forests
in north-central Colorado that had experienced >70% overstory
mortality from mountain pine beetles. We used our field measurements
to predict changes in fuel loads and potential fire behavior
in the forests that develop over the century following the outbreak
and associated harvesting. Our field measurements and stand development
projections suggest that salvage logging will alter the potential
for canopy fire behavior in future stands by creating conditions
that promote regeneration of lodgepole pine and quaking aspen
as opposed to subalpine fir. The abundant subalpine fir that
has regenerated in untreated, beetle-killed stands is predicted
to form a stratum of ladder fuels more likely to allow fires
burning on the surface to spread into the forest canopy. Harvesting
increased woody surface fuels more than 3-fold compared to untreated
stands immediately after treatments; however, coarse fuels will
increase substantially (by~55 Mg ha-1) in untreated stands within
three decades of the beetle infestation as dead trees topple,
and the elevated fuel loads will persist for more than a century.
Though salvage logging will treat a small fraction of beetle-infested
Colorado forests, in those areas treatment will affect stand
development and fuel loads and will alter potential fire behavior
for more than a century.